(ZENIT News / Denton, Nebraska, 14.07.2024).- The General Chapter of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, being held from July 3 to 18, 2024, in the International Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Denton, Nebraska, elected, in its Plenary Session, Father John Berg as Superior General for a six-year period.
This election, in which 32 capitulars were present, took place on Tuesday, July 9. Succeeding Father Andrzej Komorowski, Father Berg intends to continue the work carried out over the last six years at the service of the Fraternity.
A few days later, they elected, in the Plenary Session, the Assistants and Advisers of the Superior General. They are as follows:
Assistants: Father Hubert Bizard, Father Andrzej Komorowski and Father Arnaud Evrat.
Advisers: Father Josef Bisig and Father Benoît Paul-Joseph.
The New Superior General
American Father John Berg, born in 1970, studied Philosophy at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, USA, and Theology in the International Seminary of Saint Peter in Wigratzbad, Bavaria, Germany. He is a graduate of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. Ordained a priest in 1997, Father Berg was a Professor in the International Seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Nebraska, USA. He was Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter from 2006 to 2018. In the last six years he returned to parish work with the faithful as parish priest in the Fraternity’s parishes in Providence, Rhode Island and Omaha, Nebraska.
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter is one of the ecclesial realities growing fastest vocationally. At present it has 569 members, of which 368 are incardinated priests, 20 incorporated, two postulates and four associates. It has 22 deacons and 179 seminarians. The average age is 39.
The Fraternity
The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter is a Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right, that is, a community of priests that do not take religious vows, but that work together for a common mission in the Catholic Church, under the authority of the Holy See. The Fraternity has a double mission: in the first place, the formation and sanctification of the priests and, in the second place, the care of souls and pastoral activity at the service of the Church. The Fraternity of Saint Peter carries out this mission using the liturgical books current in 1962, as specified in its decree of erection in 1988, confirmed by Pope Francis’ decree on February 11, 2022.
The Fraternity was founded on July 18, 1988 in the Abbey of Hauterive, Switzerland by a dozen priests and some twenty seminarians. Shortly after the Fraternity’s foundation and at Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s request, Bishop Josef Stimpfle of Augsburg granted the Fraternity headquarters in Wigratzbad, a Marian Shrine in Bavaria. It is here that the Fraternity’s European Seminary is located and the Community’s Motherhouse. Its General House is in Fribourg, Switzerland.
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